In the past I have written about Amazon Web Services (AWS) and how they are winning over programmers and developers. We also recently published a Microsoft Azure resources center page with the most relevant and up to date Microsoft Azure information on the web. In this post I am going to compare both cloud services from Azure and AWS for non-profits. My goal is to help non-profit organizations reach their goals by having a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these different cloud services.

AWS has officially been operating since 2006, so they have been around longer than most cloud services. Microsoft Azure on the other hand is more of the “new kid on the block” only being in the market since 2010. Even though AWS has a big head start with their cloud service, it hasn’t stopped Microsoft Azure from going full steam ahead with their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings.

Comparing Main Services:

Both AWS and Azure have similar core features that fall under four different categories or functions:

AWS: Amazon’s four core features consist of Compute, Storage & Content Delivery, Databases, and Networking. These features are under Amazon’s extensive admin controls, which also include identity management, auditing, encryption key creation/control/storage, monitoring and logging, and more.

AWS also has powerful analytics (Amazon EMR uses Hadoop as their framework, and Kinesis which can do data stream processing in real time) and many other application services and deployment options.

Microsoft Azure also offers virtual machines (VMs) that you can get off the ground quickly and give your organization’s developers what they need to build and deploy your non-profit’s apps. Storage and database options are available as well.

IaaS Resources Compared:

Compute

AWS

Azure

General Purpose (T2, M3)

General Purpose (A-series)

Compute Optimized (C3, C4)

36 vCPU X 244 GB

Compute Optimized (A11)

16 vCPU x 112 GB Network Optimized (A9)

16 vCPU x 112 GB x 40Gb Infiniband

Memory Optimized (R3)

32 vCPU X 244 GB X 6.4 TB SSD

Compute Optimized (D-series)

16 vCPU X 112GB

Storage Optimized (I2)

32 vCPU x 244 GB x 6.4 TB SSD

Storage Optimized (DS)

In Preview

Dense Storage (D2)

32 vCPU x 244 GB x 48 TB

Performance Optimized (G-series)

32 vCPU x 448 GB

Storage

AWS

Azure

S3 Object Storage

11-9s durability (FAQ)

3-9s availability

Reduced redundancy option

Geo-redundancy option

Standard Storage Account

Blob, Table, Queue Storage

File Storage

Local, Zone, Geo redundancy option

3-9s availability

EBS Block Storage (Volumes)

Magnetic

SSD

Provisioned IOPS

Encryption option

Premium Storage Account

In preview

50K IOPS per VM, < 1 ms latency

Locally Redundant

Glacier Archival

Azure Backup

Import/Export Methods

Import/Export Methods

Network

AWS

Azure

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Virtual Network

VPN

Point-to-Site, Site-to-Site

Direct Connect

ExpressRoute

Elastic Load Balancer

Traffic Manager/Azure Load Balancer

Route 53

Bring your own

Databases/Data Warehouse

AWS

Azure

RDS

Azure SQL

DynamoDB

Azure Tables

ElastiCache

Azure Cache

Redshift

SQL Server Data Warehouse

Aurora

Comparing Pricing:

AWS

Azure

Pricing

Free Tier

Per Hour

No charge for “Stopped”

Pay for EBS volume

Free Trial

Per-Minute

“Stopped (Allocated)” bills for VM, not SW

No charge for “Stopped (De-Allocated)

Models

On-demand, Reserved, Spot

On-demand, short term commitments (pre-paid or monthly)

Discounts

Reserved Instances

All upfront (largest discount)

Partial upfront

No upfront

RI Volume Discounts

$500k-$4M = 5%

$4M – $10M = 10%

>$10M = contact AWS

Spot Instances

RI Marketplace

Through Resellers

Enterprise agreement

Upfront monetary commitment to Azure

Consumed throughout the year by using any Azure services

Billed for overages at EA rate

MSDN (per month credit)

BizSpark

Neither AWS or Azure currently have a non-profit discount.

Microsoft Azure primarily targets Platform as a Service (PaaS) customers, and is focusing on Software as a Service (SaaS) with Office 365. Azure is growing their IaaS each year but are second as far as their current market share.

If your non-profit is mostly in need of PaaS, you want seamless hybrid cloud, and you’re already using Microsoft services, Azure is the sure winner for your organization. Having all or most of your cloud services under “one roof” can help to streamline your non-profits efficiency.